


i remember you (sort of, maybe)

by ClassyFangirl



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe- No kaiju, Developing Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 19:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClassyFangirl/pseuds/ClassyFangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No kaiju attacks San Francisco in August 2013. Newton Geiszler feels like something is missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i remember you (sort of, maybe)

On August tenth, 2013, Newt is on edge all day.

He’s usually pretty on edge anyway, that’s sort of who he _is_ , but he can’t explain it, this dread in the pit of his belly, this anticipation that’s wearing him thin. He thinks it’s because the fall semester starts in a little over three weeks and he’s _still_ barely started updating his syllabus, but that doesn’t explain why he spends the whole day refreshing various news sites, including one based out of San Francisco, for some reason.

When he goes to bed that night, he cries and cries until he falls asleep, and he has no idea why.

 

ooo

 

Three weeks into the semester, one of Newt’s students leaves a copy of _Advances in Applied Mathematics_ in his classroom. Newt’s first instinct is to roll his eyes- _math_ , ugh -but instead, he picks it up and starts flipping through it. He stops when he finds a paper written by a man named Gottlieb.

Newt’s never been a math person but he gets it well enough, and Gottlieb definitely understands it _way_ better than him. He knows what he’s talking about, which Newt appreciates. But something about that name...Newt finds himself searching for him immediately.

He finds five Doctor Gottliebs during his first search. He tosses out Lars Gottlieb right away- something about the name actually makes him _angry_ , for reasons he can’t explain. Emily Whitehall-Gottlieb is a surgeon, and Karla Gottlieb is an oncologist. Dietrich Gottlieb is a physicist, and- ah- _ha,_ there he is, Doctor Hermann Gottlieb, twenty-four and sour-looking. Just by skimming the information he finds, Newt gets the feeling that Hermann Gottlieb is probably as smart as he is, even if he doesn’t have four (working on the fifth!) doctorates.

He _has_ to talk to him. He has no idea why, but he _has_ to.

Newt starts an email to the address provided by TU Berlin- thank you, internet -and pauses. He has no _reason_ to contact this man. He barely even grasps the math in his paper.

He pores over the paper again, then writes the email.

_Doctor Hermann Gottlieb,_

_Found a typo in your paper in_ Advances in Applied Mathematics. _Can you spot it? ;)_

_Doctor Newton Geiszler_

He grins and hits send.

 

ooo

 

The reply comes two days later.

_Doctor Geiszler,_

_I hardly think the misplaced comma is worth sending an email to a stranger over. Furthermore, I found_ two _typos in your paper in_ Journal of Herpetology _. You are hardly one to talk._

_And winking emoticons are not professional, no matter what anyone might have told you._

_Doctor H. Gottlieb_

Newt grins. He likes this guy already.

 

ooo

 

They continue like that for three months before Newt finally calls Hermann on the phone.

_“Who the hell is this?”_ the voice on the other end snaps. _“It is after midnight and I have work tomorrow- rather, later today.”_

“Aw, shit, timezones,” Newt sighs. “Sorry, man.”

_“...Doctor Geiszler, I presume.”_

“Yeah! Great to meet you, Hermann.”

_“Do not-”_ A heavy sigh. _“What do you want?”_

“I just...” Newt fiddles with his coffee machine idly. A bagel would go great with coffee. He imagines bow ties and suspenders for a moment, for some reason, before he shakes the image away. “Do you know, I get the craziest feeling of déjà vu whenever I talk to you?”

There’s a pause at the other end. _“You too?”_

“Yeah! Yes, holy shit, every time I talk to you, I feel like...like I’ve known you for _years_ , and we’ve had all these conversations before, except...except different?” He runs a hand through his hair. “I dunno, man. I haven’t slept since yesterday, I’m running on coffee and donuts right now.”

_“I am utterly unsurprised.”_ He can almost see Hermann rolling his eyes and shaking his head, tapping his cane impatiently-

Wait. No, he doesn’t know that Hermann has a cane. Does Hermann have a cane?

“Do you have a cane?” Newt asks abruptly.

_“That is_ none _of your business-”_

“Shit! No, no, I was just- it’s, it’s that me knowing you thing again, okay? Like, like, I can _picture_ you right now, man, in your old man PJs and your hair’s all messed up because I woke you up, right, and you’re doing that thing with your cane, the, the tapping thing.”

He waits, balling his free hand into a fist anxiously. Shit, he hasn’t pissed him off irreparably, right? Shit, shit-

_“You’re wearing some sort of ridiculous, threadbare rock band t-shirt,”_ Hermann says. _“And...boxers. With Godzilla on them.”_

Newt glances down at himself. Godzilla boxers, check, t-shirt- “AC/DC, if you wanna get specific,” Newt says.

_“Of course. It suits your ‘rock star’ mentality.”_

Newt’s _pretty sure_ he’s never called himself a rock star to Hermann, pretty sure he’s never mentioned Black Velvet Rabbits, but it slips out of Hermann’s mouth so naturally, even if the air quotes are practically tangible. “Dude,” he breathes. “How’d you _do_ that?”

_“I- I don’t know. How did_ you _guess at what I’m wearing?”_

“Uh- intuition? I dunno. I just- I just _knew_.”

_“Hrm.”_ There’s a significant pause. _“Do you...have any tattoos?”_

“Yeah- yeah, I do.”

_“Of kaiju?”_

Newt’s brow furrows. “No? That’d be pretty sick, though- I didn’t think you were into kaiju movies-”

_“No, I’m not, I was- I don’t know where that came from. What are they of, then?”_

“Uh- I’ve just got the one, actually. It’s this, like, stylized Komodo dragon? I dunno, I was eighteen and _wasted_.”

_“It’s on your back.”_

The skin on his back feels tingly, like he’s being touched. “Y-yeah. Yeah, it is.”

_“I can...see it, sort of. In my head.”_

Newt lets out a shaking laugh. “Dude,” he says. “I am _way_ too sleep-deprived for this shit.”

_“You started it,”_ Hermann says, not sounding as annoyed as he wants to seem.

“Yeah. Good point. I should let you go back to bed. Good night, Hermann.”

_“...Good night, Newton.”_

Newt dreams of aliens and robots and Hermann’s frown.

 

ooo

 

A few weeks later, Hermann sends Newt a simple birthday card. Newt’s pretty sure he’s never told Hermann when his birthday is, and he knows it’s not listed on the MIT website.

On February fifth, Newt Googles Manila, Philippines a dozen times and is surprised every time to see it’s still standing.

He’s about to call Hermann when Hermann calls him first.

_“Manila,”_ Hermann says. _“I can’t stop bloody thinking about Manila.”_

“Did you have this with San Francisco, too?” Newt asks immediately. Not _yeah, me too, that’s so weird_ because they’ve gotten used to this, this weird almost-telepathy-but-not-really thing they’ve got going on.

_“Yes- in August. I- I cried all day and I had no idea why.”_

Newt’s hands are shaking. “I need to see you, dude. In person. Somehow.”

_“I don’t know- wait.”_ There’s a rustling of papers on the other end of the phone. _“Today I was invited to a conference in Boston. I’ll be there in a month.”_

“Awesome. Awesome, dude. I’ll...keep an eye out for you.”

_“The same to you.”_

There’s a thousand more things that Newt wants to say, but he can’t find the words. He sort of gets the feeling that if he just _screamed_ his feelings, Hermann would understand, even if he would yell at him first.

Hermann hangs up, and Newt starts a countdown to the conference.

 

ooo

 

It’s a math and physics conference, and Newt is not a mathematician or a physicist, but he talks/shoves himself in anyway, because that is the Geiszler way. Once he’s in the building, he feels this _gravitational pull_ , and he has to force himself to walk, not run, to where Hermann is.

They meet each other halfway, and they kiss instantly. Newt doesn’t even think about it- it seems natural as anything that he should be kissing Hermann. Kissing Hermann is, like, a _state of being_ , not an action.

They break apart, and Newt sort of wants to say, “Huh, that was weird,” because he’s pretty sure, logically, that it was, but it’s _not_ , it’s the furthest thing from weird. Hermann’s cheeks are pink and perfect, and they’re getting stared at, probably, but he doesn’t care. Neither does Hermann, really.

“I found you,” Hermann whispers.

Newt knows he doesn’t mean he found him in the conference building. It’s something _bigger_ than that. Newt grins and cups Hermann’s face in his hands. “I found you too.”

 

ooo

 

“Stacker Pentecost.”

“Tendo Choi.”

They’ve been at it for half an hour now, shut in Hermann’s hotel room, naming people and jaegers and kaiju. Newt rattled off a number of kaiju first- _Hundun Trespasser Knifehead Otachi Slattern Leatherback Onibaba_ -while Hermann listed jaegers- _Coyote Tango Romeo Blue Gipsy Danger Cherno Alpha Striker Eureka_ and on and on and on.

“Mako,” Hermann says. “Mako...Mori. That’s it.”

“Raleigh Becket,” Newt says. “And...Yancy? Yamarashi.”

“Hercules Hansen, Scott Hansen, Chuck Hansen-”

“Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky.”

Hermann sighs and rests his face in his hands. “I’ve never met any of these people in my life,” he says. “But some of those names...they make me so _sad_.”

“At least we know we’re not crazy,” Newt tries. “We can’t be crazy if we feel the same things.”

“You’re right. _Gott_. I don’t understand it, though. I _hate_ not understanding things.”

“God, do I feel ya on that one.”

They sit down on Hermann’s bed. “I have all these words and names in my head,” Hermann says, gesturing vaguely towards himself. “And they all _mean_ things but I don’t know _what_. I think- I think I could code a jaeger, though. I hardly have any idea what a jaeger _is_.”

“Dude, I had no idea a jaeger was something you _could_ code. All this is as big a mystery to me, too.” Newt rubs at his forearms. They feel empty, and he’s getting the itch for a tattoo. He’s had the urge for years- besides the shitty Komodo dragon -but he’s never been so _passionate_ about anything in particular that he wants it permanently on his body.

Hermann presses a hand to Newt’s arm. “You had...Yamarashi on one of them,” he says. “And...Onibaba, I think? On the other.”

“Had?”

Hermann blinks, then shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know _anything_ , Christ.”

“At least I know you,” Newt says. He means for it to come out like a cheesy romance novel line, and it probably sounds like that, but he ends up saying it so _softly_ , it sort of sounds...honest.

Hermann smiles and touches Newt’s cheek. “And I you.”

 

ooo

 

Hermann gets a job at MIT two months later, and Newt starts renting a nicer apartment with an elevator that actually works. They’re together almost all the time, bickering and talking and editing each other’s papers and kissing. Newt gets a tattoo of Yamarashi (kind of- he can’t quite remember what it looked like) on his arm, and people tell him it looks badass, since it hasn’t destroyed any cities here. Hermann sets up a program to search for all the news of the people whose names they can recall.

They cheer when Mako Mori wins a youth hanbō fighting competition, they drink champagne when they read the Kaidanovskys’ wedding announcement, they grin when Chuck Hansen wins a local spelling bee.

They don’t think they’ll ever meet any of them, but they like to pretend. They’d have Pentecost over for tea, make dinner for the Beckets, send brownies to the Wei triplets. It’s too bad that it’ll never really happen. Newt thinks he’d really get along with that Tendo guy, wherever he is, whoever he is. He’s got a hunch.

But they have each other. They fight and yell and scream but they always make up, always forgive each other and forget the past. They never quite figure out what their whole past is, exactly, though Newt has some very science fiction-inspired ideas. They think it’s all right, not knowing, even if it does drive them crazy some days. They still have each other, no matter what.

And the future is kaiju-free, and it is _beautiful_.


End file.
